William Blake's work presents a stern challenge to historical criticism. Jon Mee's new study meets that challenge by investigating contexts outside the domain of standard literary histories. He traces the distinctive rhetoric of the illuminated books to the French Revolution controversy of the 1790s and Blake's fusion of the diverse currents of radicalism abroad in that decade. Dangerous Enthusiasm presents a more comprehensively politicized picture of Blake than any previous study. It is supported by a wealth of original research which will be of interest to historians and literary critics alike. Blake emerges from these pages as a "bricoleur" who fused the language of London's popular dissenting culture with the more skeptical radicalism of the Enlightenment. His prophetic books are shown to be less the expressions of isolated genius than the products of a complex response to the cultural politics of his contemporaries.

Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s

Biographies & Memoirs

Mee, Jon

Arts & Literature

Clarendon Press

William Blake's work presents a stern challenge to historical criticism. Jon Mee's study meets that challenge by investigating contexts outside the domain of standard literary histories. He traces the distinctive rhetoric of the illuminated books to the French Revolution controversy of the 1790s and Blake's fusion of the diverse currents of radicalism abroad in that decade. Dangerous Enthusiasm presents a more comprehensively politicized picture of Blake than any previous study. It is supported by a wealth of original research which will be of interest to historians and literary critics alike. Blake emerges from these pages as a "bricoleur" who fused the language of London's popular dissenting culture with the more skeptical radicalism of the Enlightenment. His prophetic books are shown to be less the expressions of isolated genius than the products of a complex response to the cultural politics of his contemporaries.

Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Clarendon Paperbacks)

This study looks at the way writers in the Romantic period, both canonical and popular, attempted to situate themselves in relation to enthusiasm, frequently craving the idea of its therapeutic power, but often also seeking to distinguish their writing from what many regarded as its destructive and pathological power.

Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period

Literature & Fiction

British & Irish

Oxford University Press

This engaging volume was pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's most popular book during her lifetime. Difficult to categorize, it is both an arresting travel book and a moving exploration of her personal and political selves. Wollstonecraft set out for Scandinavia just two weeks after her first suicide attempt, on a mission from the lover whose affections she doubted, to recover his silver on a ship that had gone missing. With her baby daughter and a nursemaid, she traveled across the dramatic landscape and wrote sublime descriptions of the natural world, and the events and people she encountered. Fascinating appendices include Imlay's commission to recover his lost silver, Wollstonecraft's recently discovered letter to the Danish Prime Minister asking for assistance, the private letters she wrote to Imlay during her travels in Scandinavia, a chapter from Godwin's memoir of Wollstonecraft, and a selection of contemporary reviews. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Oxford World's Classics)

WOLLSTONECRAFT, MARY

Brekke, Tone

What is enthusiasm? Enthusiasm for most of the eighteenth century was identified with excess of religious feeling, although it came increasingly to be used to describe the unregulated and infectious urgings of the crowd more generally. Yet there was a developing alternative understanding of the term which identified it with a therapeutic influx of feeling in an increasingly formalistic and commodified world. This understanding came to be particularly identified with poetry. Enthusiasm was deemed a necessary condition of poetry by the end of the century, but not a sufficient one. For without proper regulation, poetic enthusiasm might become nothing more than the formless emotionalism of the crowd that the literary elite perceived all around them. Although enthusiasm might be thought of as a distinctly Romantic term, this study looks at the way the inherited discourse of enthusiasm structured most writing of the Romantic period. Many of those new to writing as a career in the period took enthusiasm to license their feelings as a legitimate basis for turning to print. Others took this as an alarming version of the old virus. Few elite writers, Coleridge and Wordsworth included, did not take pains to show they were on the right side of the fence that separate the noble enthusiasm of the poet from either the fanaticism of the crowd or the undisciplined pretensions of hacks and scribblers. Understanding the influence of these processes of regulation and the difficulty faced by writers in clearly articulating the difference they were meant to enshrine is at the center of Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation.

Charles Dickens became immensely popular early on in his career as a novelist, and his appeal continues to grow with new editions prompted by recent television and film adaptations, as well as large numbers of students studying the Victorian novel. This lively and accessible introduction to Dickens focuses on the extraordinary diversity of his writing. Jon Mee discusses Dickens's novels, journalism and public performances, the historical contexts and his influence on other writers. In the process, five major themes emerge: Dickens the entertainer; Dickens and language; Dickens and London; Dickens, gender, and domesticity; and the question of adaptation, including Dickens's adaptations of his own work. These interrelated concerns allow readers to start making their own new connections between his famous and less widely read works and to appreciate fully the sheer imaginative richness of his writing, which particularly evokes the dizzying expansion of nineteenth-century London.

The Cambridge Introduction to Charles Dickens (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press

Jon Mee explores the popular democratic movement that emerged in the London of the 1790s in response to the French Revolution. Central to the movement's achievement was the creation of an idea of 'the people' brought into being through print and publicity. Radical clubs rose and fell in the face of the hostile attentions of government. They were sustained by a faith in the press as a form of 'print magic', but confidence in the liberating potential of the printing press was interwoven with hard-headed deliberations over how best to animate and represent the people. Ideas of disinterested rational debate were thrown into the mix with coruscating satire, rousing songs, and republican toasts. Print personality became a vital interface between readers and print exploited by the cast of radicals returned to history in vivid detail by Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s. This title is also available as Open Access.

Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s: The Laurel of Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 112)

The period 1792–94 witnessed the emergence of the first genuinely popular radical movement in Britain. This collection contains the key trials of London radicalism from 1792–94. It includes a general introduction, but each of the trials is introduced in its own right and supported by endnotes and further reading.

Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, Part I Vol 1

History

Barrell, John

World

Routledge

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mee, Jon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mee, Jon

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mee, Jon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s

Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period

Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Oxford World's Classics)

Romanticism, Enthusiasm, and Regulation: Poetics and the Policing of Culture in the Romantic Period

The Cambridge Introduction to Charles Dickens (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)

The Cambridge Introduction to Charles Dickens (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)

Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s: The Laurel of Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 112)

Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism in the 1790s: The Laurel of Liberty (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 112)

Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, Part I Vol 1